All posts tagged BRIC

It was almost exactly 10 years ago that Goldman Sachs first came up with the term “BRICs.” Since then, Brazil, Russia, India and China have seen impressive growth figures and improved standards of living.

But when it comes to feeding its children, India has fared the worst. In 2006, around 40% of Indian children under the age of five were undernourished, only a small improvement from six years earlier, when the rate was 43%, according to government data. South Asia as a whole has the highest proportion of underweight children in the world, worse even than sub-Saharan Africa, according to 2008 U.N. data. Read More »

In income and wealth, Indian states fare poorly against China’s provinces.

Not much, besides the size of their populations, which hover around 193 million. The Indian state’s economy, however, is nothing like Brazil’s. With a gross domestic product of just over $100 billion, it’s more like Qatar, a country with less than 2 million residents.

This is just one of the findings of a new study by the Economist, which matched Indian states to countries with equivalent GDPs and population sizes.

Although India boasts one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, the magazine’s analysis, broken down in three maps, shows there is little to get excited about when you zoom in on the GDP of individual states. Read More »

While American billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are in India trying to persuade the country’s rich to give their money away, another group of businessmen is here to get them to spend it on themselves.

A team of Italian entrepreneurs who work in the luxury sector are in Mumbai for a two-day conference to talk luxury and business.

It’s no big surprise that the luxury industry is eyeing markets like India: It’s estimated that in less than five years emerging markets will make up 50% of luxury sales globally. The industry realized just how important these markets are during the global economic downturn–prompting commentators to say it was “saved by the BRICs,” referring to the top emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, left, with South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe in November.

It’s official. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that Brazil, Russia, India and China have agreed to invite South Africa to join their grouping of emerging economies, referred to as BRIC.

There’s been no announcement as to whether the acronym might change, but one possibility, BRICSA, has nice ring to it.

South Africa’s government will be pleased. But the notion has left some scratching their heads. BRIC, after all, is a term coined by a Goldman Sachs economist in 2001 to refer to the four large, fast-growing economies that collectively will take up an ever-greater share of global economic output. Read More »

Although PC penetration in India is low, at less than 5% of the population, and so is Internet use, with the country’s approximately 80 million Internet users averaging just about half an hour online a day, the report points to China’s growth and its 384 million surfers as a sign of how quickly this could change. Read More »

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